


Ashes Ashes

by Villain



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: AU, M/M, Plague Doctor - Freeform, black death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-18 01:07:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3550397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Villain/pseuds/Villain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal is a reputed plague doctor in 17th century France. Will is a Romani resistance leader. Angry and terrified, the populace credits the Black Death as God’s wrath wrought by the gypsies for their heathen ways. As the plague worsens, the Church condones a massacre. Enchanted by Will, Hannibal takes him into his home and writes him off as a plague victim, striking his name from the records of the living. With no identity, the grudge of an evil Duke, and an entire city out for his blood if the Black Death claim him first, Will has no choice but to remain hidden with Hannibal… unless he can find the true source of the plague and save his people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes Ashes

CAST

Hannibal Lecter – Plague Doctor

Will Graham – Romani

Alana Bloom – Nun, Headmistress of the Orphanage

Abigail Hobbs -- Romani

Freddie Lounds – Journalist

Jack Crawford – Constable

Bedelia du Maurier – Magistrate

Beverly Katz, Brian Zeller, Jimmy Price – Grave Robbers

Frederick Chilton – Plague Doctor

Mason Verger -- The Duke of Swine

 

…

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

            Swinging through the night went whispers of thin shadows wearing the faces of skeletal birds. The Plague Doctors tread with phantom steps from door to door, wielding their canes like long claws to curl around the ailing hearts of the condemned. Each night like a cancer they would spread. Never speaking, only performing their macabre tasks.

            Lamb’s blood was smeared over doorways all across the city. As in biblical times the people sought to appease God’s wrath and spare their families from the plague. All of Europe learned quickly that no amount of lamb’s blood could keep the leeching hands of the plague from marking thousands upon thousands for death.

            It was a hopeless time, stained black as pitch in the annuals of history. And the Plague Doctors, called Beak Men by the small children watching terrified from behind closed windows, reigned. They were strange and terrifying knights tasked with defending lives against the sickness slowly draining the world to death. In the dark the clacking of their heavy boots and the glinting of their glass eyes inspired both hope and fear. But underneath the layers of oiled black cloth they were mortal men.

            Hannibal Lecter was the longest standing Doctor, his survival defying the odds each month he continued to draw breath despite his peers dropping like flies from constant exposure. His only colleague to make it as far was Frederick Chilton, a suspicious man by nature, and one Hannibal would never quite label a friend though Frederick would claim otherwise to any passersby. They often patrolled together, though not by Hannibal’s choice. And just as often when they would visit a plague house Frederick would hang back as Hannibal inspected the victim, albeit with his cane.

            “You really get too close, you know,” Frederick said. His gate was more of a saunter as they walked side by side down a cobblestone street. The mask covering his face made the effeminate lilt to his tone thin and ticklish to hear.

            “Few have such skill at a distance as you,” Hannibal returned smoothly, already bored with the company. Above them the ashy sky was shattered by a murder of crows cawing noisily. Hannibal tilted his face up, the reflection flashing across the eyes of his mask.

            Frederick snorted, “Oh how I wish you would put even an ounce of effort into your lies Dr. Lecter.” He didn’t see the answering smile on Lecter’s face, but knew it was there.  

            Soon they would part ways to peel out of their uniform and perform a ritual cleansing to banish the plague. Frederick maintained an obsessive clean, able to afford such luxury due to his family name. Hannibal knew Frederick had the wealth to avoid the work, but his hunger for glory was too strong to resist. As for himself, Hannibal was fascinated by death just as much as he feared it. He enjoyed the performance wrought by the human condition when faced with such overwhelming and impossible adversity. Though the plague itself was such a terrible waste. The flesh, the body was rotted from the inside. Gone to waste like a kill abandoned by fattened wolves.

            A posting along the road, paint still drying, caught Hannibal’s attention as they continued their stroll down the street.

            Frederick clacked his cane against the posting and scoffed. “Simpletons. This sickness is not man made. It’s from filth.” He smacked the bricks again for emphasis, turning to observe Lecter’s reaction. But the other man merely kept walking until Frederick jogged up to his side. “You of all people, Dr. Lecter; don’t you find it to be primitive?”

            “Fear is the foundation of human motivation, Frederick.” Hannibal clicked his tongue behind the sweaty confines of the mask. “It is unfortunate that the gypsies have been burdened as vessels for that fear.”

            “The smell,” Frederick chided. “If they must do away with them, drowning is just as effective and leagues cleaner.”

            “That would not do their evil justice in the minds of the people,” said Hannibal. “Trial by fire.”

            “Stupid,” Frederick complained. “If they are demons as the Church claims than fire is their familiar. As I said, simpletons.”

            They soon reached the streets where poverty slowly bled into wealth. Hannibal’s own handsome townhouse stood across a tiny grove of sapling Chinese Empresses where once another house had stood. Seven years ago it had burned to the ground, nearly taking the entire block with it. Only Hannibal’s house remained unscathed, built as it was out of brick instead of wood. In the aftermath Hannibal had bought the tiny square of dead land and gently nurtured it back to life. There now thrived a lush vegetable garden, protected by the shade of the growing Empress trees that framed it. Many of his neighbors had initially looked down on the idea of an aristocrat putting his hands in the dirt to till, but soon after Hannibal’s dinner parties charmed the entirety of the neighborhood. Despite the prodding of the socialites he never shared his secret for growing such succulent produce. Not even Frederick knew how Hannibal achieved such a distinctly delicious taste to his vegetables and the fruits that speckled the branches of neatly trimmed bushes and low-growing trees.

            Hannibal gazed at the garden now, thinking ahead to dinner.

            Frederick was still going on about the posting they’d seen, which had been an announcement for a public burning of a gypsy witch in the square that night. It was crudely drawn on the wall, and would be washed away by morning.

            Frederick airily said, “So I’ll see you tonight in the square then?”

            Hannibal smiled underneath the mask. Simpletons indeed. “I imagine so.”

 

…

 

            The girl tied to the stake had the largest blue eyes Hannibal thought he’d ever seen. Her round face was shrouded in a charming wash of freckles, and the maroon of her heart-shaped mouth was stark against her pallor. Covering her pubescent form was a white shift, tugged and wrinkled under the weight and pull of heavy ropes. Around her feet were layered dry sticks and straw that sliced the skin of her shins. Hannibal watched the blood trailing down and frowned in irritation. This was far worse a waste than the plague. She shook like a fragile leaf next to the trunk of a man carrying a lit torch.

             “This monster and her ilk have condemned us,” proclaimed a woman at the head of the stage. She was a creature with nothing but sharp edges protecting shadows, the fiery tangle of her hair vibrant around the pale escape of her face. “God is angered by their existence, and by those of us who sit idly by and watch!” A long finger jabbed at the audience. “How many have you lost, how many are rotting away, how many of us right here will have to die for their sins?” She paused, collecting herself into a thoughtful pose while sparing a glance at the man with the torch. The square was dead quiet, enraptured by her slicing tongue. Her sweetly rounded voice, light and calm, carried clearly over the audience. “When I told you of their evil you laughed at me, told me I was spouting untruth. But now you see,” she sneered haughtily, face maintaining majesty even with the subtle twist of her lip. “I was right all along. You should have listened and maybe some would have been spared.”

            “A distasteful woman,” Frederick murmured, though his eyes roamed over her body tailored in a well-fitted frock that spoke of new money and cheap taste.

            _Le Gazette de France_ employed Freddy Lounds as a gossip. If news was slow that week she would deliver a tantalizing scoop to engage the masses. _Le Gazette_ was a newspaper Hannibal subscribed to – the only one in France and one of the only in existence. He was fascinated by the invention of the printing press and what wonders it could bring en masse. He certainly read Freddy’s drivel, amused at her absurdity and lack of moral compass. Many a good name had been tarnished under her quick words. The woman had no shame, and lavished under the attentions of the public once she had sowed the seed of blame against the gypsies for bringing the plague to the land.

            Distantly Hannibal wondered what the girl would sound like screaming. Burning was slow, and a unique horror. He hadn’t seen anything like it since he was a small child. The plague had brought out the monstrous nature of people, and since the plague had struck Hannibal had witnessed sixteen public burnings. Technically they had been illegal, but the sickness had rotted the mind of society as much as it did the bodies of the stricken.

            “Will anybody,” Frederick mused, craning his neck to look around, “try to save her?” Without his uniform Frederick was a diminutive figure, though he stood as tall as Hannibal. He moved like a bird but spoke like Hannibal imagined a cat would. Superior yet tentative. If he raised his voice it became shrill so he made a conscious effort to uphold the façade of calm.

            “A young girl is quite different from the usual fare,” Hannibal agreed. He’d been watching the crowd. There was fear, rage, and hunger. His lip quirked. He thought of his dinner, and the people in the crowd. Cheeks, tongue, neck, shoulder, flank, belly, thigh-

            Freddy abruptly stopped, eyes blazing with a fire that was black and cold. By this time she had a hand curled meanly in the Romani girl’s hair, angling her head back until her deep blue eyes were pointed to the sky. But Freddy’s attention had moved from the girl she was about to burn to a woman standing in the crowd standing with the long skirts of her nun’s habit trailing in the filth of the street.

            “Sister Alana,” she ground out, barely above a snarl.

            “Unhand that child,” Alana said calmly. She walked forward, the crowd parting around her with respect.

            From the sidelines Hannibal stood with Frederick looking on with piqued interest. He nodded to Alana when she glanced at him, and received a tight smile in return. They’d been mere acquaintances until Alana had stepped into the caretaker’s role of one of the city’s many growing orphanages. She was the only person that tried to give the children there a better life, and Hannibal had won her friendship by providing food from his garden, and generous annual donations to keep the children clean and fed. If Freddy Lounds escalated the situation, Hannibal would not hesitate to step in and defend Sister Alana Bloom. Next to him Frederick seemed to sense the change in his demeanor and subtly leaned away.

            Clawing her fingers through fine dark hair until she had her claws curved into the girl’s neck, Freddy cooed, “This is not a child, _la bonne sœur_. This is a demon carrier of the sickness.”

            There was slow rumble of agreement from the crowd.

            “And on what authority do you make that claim?” Alana asked, still moving forward. As she walked she swept her eyes over the crowd and pursed her lips while many bowed their heads, not able to meet her gaze. “You, _Mademoiselle_ Lounds?”

            Hackles rising, Freddy stalked to the edge of the stage. “I am the voice of the people.”

            “And this,” Alana replied coolly, raising her rosary, “Is the law of God. I will not let you harm an innocent.” She’d reached the stage and stared up into Freddy’s face, icy blue eyes shining boldly out the pale oval of her face. The slip of her mouth was pressed into a thin line while Freddy’s curled into an ugly sneer. Titans clashing. “Bring her to me, Freddy. Let us all witness.” Turning to the crowd, Alana held her rosary aloft. “Let us _all_ witness.”

            Freddie looked like an animal cornered. Her teeth were bared; hair crackling around her face like the flames she wished would consume the young girl. Eyes darting over the crowd as some people began to murmur, Freddy could only watch helplessly as Alana gracefully walked up the short stretch of stairs onto the dais. She approached the young Romani girl with a hand outstretched, draped in rosary beads. Blue eyes slipped close in obvious relief and the girl pressed her face, stained with tear-tracks, into the nun’s cool white hand. Freddy growled when a woman from the crowd pointed out, “The rosary touches her face!”

            “Don’t fear,” Alana said to the girl. “What is your name?”

            The girl whispered, “Abigail. _S'il vous plait_ , don’t let her burn me… My name is Abigail.”

            She cradled Abigail’s face in her hands, wiping away her tears. “See? No demon. Just a scared little girl-”

            “You honestly think,” Freddy laughed meanly, grabbing the torch and shoving the nun out of the way, “That a demon strong enough to bring the sickness couldn’t trick a blind fool like you?” Hannibal was there to catch Alana as she stumbled from the stage. Freddy snarled, “The people want justice!” She stabbed the torch into the pile of dry sticks at the girl’s feet. There was uproar from the crowd and the flames reflected hot and wicked in the irises of Freddy’s eyes. Alana fought Hannibal’s grip, screaming as Abigail began to wail and thrash.

            The smoke was acrid, obscuring the view of the girl burning. But the smell pervaded. Hannibal’s lip curled. Suddenly Frederick was at his side, pushing at him and gasping urgently, “The cavalry has arrived.”

             Police burst into the square on horseback, a clatter of hooves quickly dispersing the crowd. Constable Jack Crawford crashed onto the dias, his mount’s sharp hooves stabbing into the flames and breaking the piles of sticks into scattered embers. He swung down and sliced at the heavy ropes with his saber, catching the girl as she fell. Sister Alana was at his side in seconds, calming hand on the flank of his horse and the other immediately finding the hand of the Romani girl and holding it close. He let her have the girl, standing as Alana cradled the burnt figure to her chest.

            Sharp eyes scanning the crowd, Jack caught the flash of red hair and ground his teeth. “Louds,” he said, tone lifting into a question as Hannibal Lecter stepped into view.

            Beyond them the police force finished disbanding the crowd, mist rising off the flanks of their horses in the coppery light of the street lamps.

            “The one and only,” Hannibal confirmed, bending to gently inspect the damage wrought on Abigail by the fire. “Alana, I will escort you to the orphanage. Her burns are minor, but I am sure very painful.” He brushed sweaty strands of hair out of the girl’s face. She’d fainted, expression drawn and clenched. “I will treat her there.”

            Jack rubbed a callused hand over his face. “This damn sickness is driving the people mad.”

           “Thank goodness you are here then, Jack.” Hannibal offered a small smile. Helping Alana lift Abigail onto Jack’s horse, Hannibal watched the police escort the two women out of the square. He would stop at his home for his doctor’s bag, and perhaps collect some vegetables for the children.

            “We wouldn’t have let her burn, would we?” asked Frederick, beside Hannibal as he walked home.

            “I think not,” decided Hannibal, shooting his companion a wry smile. “What a sight you would have made, Frederick, springing into action.”

            He huffed at the words. “It is a gentleman’s duty to rescue a damsel in distress.”

            Leaning back into the quiet hush of rain opening from the sky while Frederick grumbled, Hannibal said, “And mankind, as well. In deep distress.”

 

…

 

            Grubby hands gripped his waistcoat and Hannibal obligingly patted each scruffy head in turn. The children giggled and tumbled around him, their flushed faces innocent of the darkness creeping outside the safety of Bloom Orphanage. Alana was still sitting with Abigail, worried to leave her alone lest she wake up in fright and confusion. Instead Hannibal was charged with sending the little ones to bed, ultimately deferring to one of the older children after several unsuccessful attempts. He waved at the cherubic faces while he let himself out, back into the chilling grip of the night. His doctor’s bag was heavy against his leg, swinging in time with his echoing steps on the wet cobblestones. Pools of lamplight illuminated his path, navigating the twisting streets of the city. Faintly he heard cries of mourning, a sound to which he’d grown accustomed. He wondered which of his colleagues loomed amidst the grieving family members.

            He would go patrolling tonight. There had been an increase in cases; no wonder Freddy Lounds had been able to rally a mob in the square.

            Taking the long way home, Hannibal slipped through the cramped alleyways of his sick city. Rats skittered to and fro, their little black bodies weaving random patterns along the pathway. There also was an increase of these vermin in tandem with the plague. It was an interesting parallel that Hannibal had noticed.

            Looking down at a particularly brave rat that was perched inquisitively on the lip of a trash bin, Hannibal heard shuffling down the darker turn of a fork in the alley. Dank and wet, the passageway was more fitting for the vermin. He crept to the mouth of the tunnel, keeping close to the wall. An archway framed two men seemingly caught in a struggle, one in a handsome mink coat bullying the other against the curved wall. The maroon of Hannibal’s eyes held the narrow light of the alley, drawing over the slender body of the man wearing threadbare clothes. A jangle of talismans at his neck bespoke of what he was: one of the Romani. His face was pressed to the cold bricks; dark spiraling curls trembling around his angular face. Hannibal realized the wealthy man was crushing sturdy hips beneath manicured hands, grinding his pelvis into the curve of the other man’s ass. They both groaned, one in pain and the other in perverse pleasure.

            “I’m pleased you came back to me…”

            Hannibal stiffened. That voice was one he knew, one that drew his upper lip into a curl of distaste. The Duke of Swine. Mason Verger pressed into the Romani, breath heavy as he panted against the side of his face, “You know that I’m the only one who will have you now.” Licking at the sweat beading beneath the man’s brow, Verger jerked against the round flesh outlined beneath patched brown breeches. “I’ll put it in you quite hard. I would love to make you cry again. Do you remember? I remember it very well. Cost me a pretty coin.”

            His voice had an ugly and sharp weight to it, like the blunt end of a knife slapping bone. Nasal and abrupt in his way of speaking with a face still not rid of its baby fat; Mason Verger was a dangerous man. One whom Hannibal regarded with extreme caution in any setting. The man was immensely powerful, and rumored to be as sadistic as he was untouchable. Hannibal knew firsthand this rumor to be true.

            “I think you would like that.” Swirling his tongue around the gypsy’s ear, Verger shoved his hand between strong legs and gripped hard enough that the other man gasped and stilled. “You’re desperate.”

            The Romani’s chin was resting against the wall, blue eyes flat and washed free of emotion. A shadow of facial hair lined an angular jaw, encircling a plush mouth that Hannibal found he couldn’t quite part his gaze from until Verger shoved the man hard enough that he split his upper lip. The blood blossomed crimson across his mouth.

            “Oh my, too hard,” Verger cooed falsely, following up with a feminine hand tangled in brown curls hard enough that the man was forced into what to Hannibal was both a beautiful and agonized arch. But the man didn’t defend himself. He kept quiet, eyes shut. Drops of blood fell from his chin onto his shirtfront. And Verger just continued to stare at him, gaze eating him as surely as teeth would rend his sun kissed skin stained sallow in the cover of the archway. “You’ll come home with me.”

            The man shook his head, teeth clenching when Verger hit him with an open fist. There was a wet sound when his knees hit the floor of the tunnel.

            “Now too dirty to come home,” the Duke chastised, tugging the man’s face with both hands to the front of his finely tailored trousers. He pushed the man’s head down, thrusting forward to a rhythm that matched his singsong words. “I would give you fine clothes and lash you with whips fashioned from the hides of young exotic gazelle. From Africa.” The hem of his fine coat was dragged through the filth when Verger suddenly crouched down to the gypsy’s level and roughly brushed his hair back, the gaudy rings on his fingers ripping strands painfully free from his scalp. “When you can split skin cleanly you can see the fat beneath. There isn’t much to you, but I would fatten you up like one of my pigs. I would make you squeal like them, too.” It was said so flatly, and with casual conviction that made the other man flinch. Finally a play of emotion escaped his careful facade. Verger focused on it like a rabid dog towards blood.

            Hannibal could practically smell the fear, a heady scent that curled into his sensitive nostrils. This man felt fear beautifully; it painted his face pale and lit his eyes. He mourned that Verger had his hands on the man, and not Hannibal himself. If Hannibal had him, he would want to see every shade of emotion on that face. It was rare for him to feel a physical yearning, and he marveled at it while Verger fit his hands around the Romani’s throat.

            “I ruined my coat,” said Verger. “But I wanted to come down here with you, to your level. I’m asking, at your level – come home with me. Don’t fight. Come quietly, I’ll take care of you. I’ve come to like your face so much I think about it when we’re apart.” The words fell flat and cold, despite the feeling clumsily manufactured behind them. “I searched for you. I wanted to put my cock deep inside of you again and feel you twitch.” His fingers tightened by slow degrees, and still the other man didn’t defend himself. “Your face in pain-” He groaned indulgently, shaking the other man by the neck in a fit of frustrated arousal. “You’ll die out here, from that peasant illness or the angry mobs carrying pitchforks.” Lips quivering in mirth, Verger said with a hysterical laugh, “Better impaled on my cock… I’m not going to ask anymore.” Standing and dragging the gypsy up by his unrelenting chokehold, Verger bit viciously at the man’s bloodied lips. “Not asking. I’ll bring you home tonight,” he said quietly, as if to himself. “I’ll tie you to the foot of my bed and feed you scraps before I fuck you each night. Yes,” he moaned, “I’ll hurt you and mark you. Split you open; you’ll last much longer I think…” Giddiness threaded his words, spittle running down his chin with his excitement. “Than the others did.”

            Before it happened Hannibal could see the bunching of muscles in the man’s left calf. Then Verger was howling; a knee had been planted firmly to crush his manhood. With a quirk of his lips, Hannibal folded back into the shadowed wall, listening raptly to the sounds of the other man breaking free of Verger’s hold and twisting away in the muck. The staggering figure raced past Hannibal, disappearing at a dead run down the alleyway. In his hand he clutched an ornamental coin purse that would have matched Verger’s fine coat exactly. Hannibal found he couldn’t hold back the smile that widened in the wake of the Duke’s angry groaning.

 


End file.
